There is hopefully going to be a 2nd volume of Mezolith. I was speaking to one of the DFC artists at the weekend about the series that had run in the defunct comic and Mezolith seems to be the most likely one to continue at this moment. All the others are stuck in rights hell. DFC (created by David Fickling) was owned by Random house, the new comic The Phoenix is owned by DFB (David Fickling Books) but the rights to the Phoenix stories remain with Random House, if I understand it properly.

Speaking as an archaeologist it was an excellent piece of work. Of course the myths etc were fiction, but no more than any we set in the 20th century and, for me, it captured to essence of the Mesolithic.

Mezolith was also (to my knowledge) the only DFC comic to be published in France. And yes it was pretty excellent. I still wish they'd avoided the good tribe / evil tribe trope, but I loved the part with the raven woman.

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools.

“I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools,” the District 64 Representative said Monday.

…

“Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion,” Hodges said. “We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

The Bible Map of the World, 1893, by “Professor” Orlando Ferguson of Hot Springs, South Dakota.

Orlando was a geocentrist who created the map based on 400 passages in the Bible that supposedly describe what the Earth is like, and none of them supports the idea of a spherical Earth, or one that revolves around the Sun.

For those of you who feel inclined to troll fundie messageboard... You think the earth is round? And you call yourself christian?

I'm on a prison news kick, and while private prison corporations continue to make me angry, I just read an article that shows another way in which private corporations found a way to get rich off of the inmate population. One of the companies benefiting from prison labour: everyone's favorite Wal-Mart.

In a recent expose by Truthout, a female prisoner at Arizona's state prison Perryville unit described her day working as a laborer for a private company called Martori Farms.Martori Farms just happens to be one of the leading suppliers of agricultural produce to that beacon of corporate responsibility known as Walmart. Private companies and corporations have always found ways to exploit prison labor, but this tidy set-up, and the hypocrisy around it, is beyond the pale.

And then:

I asked an NCIA spokesperson, Wil Helsop, how Martori Farms and other private companies can get away with what could reasonably be described as forced labor. He explained that the PIE program classifies certain work functions as a "service" rather than an actual "job", and therefore is not subject to the criteria. Conveniently, then, the backbreaking work of picking crops in the blistering sun counts as a "service", so prisoners can be paid even less than the immigrants who have traditionally performed this work.

That's right. Kick those job-stealing immigrants out of this country! We need those jobs for Americans! American prisoners who we can pay somewhere around $0.50/hr!

Much of the 30km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant is pine forest, and some of it so badly contaminated that a forest fire could create a devastating radioactive smoke cloud.Firefighters in Chernobyl have one of the least enviable jobs in the world. Their equipment is very basic. They believe they know when they are fighting a radioactive fire - they experience a tingling, metallic sensation in their skin - but they do not fully understand the serious dangers of being exposed to superheated radioactive particles.

Yeah, when we were visiting the place that was one of the interesting points of the trip, the Chornobyl fire station. They have to be pretty goddamn vigilant, a forest or a brush fire can really fuck up half of the Europe.

Russians have a bit of experience with this... In a certain place where they did nuclear tests one lake got pretty badly contaminated. As a stroke of genius the Soviet officials decided to dry it out completely. What happened was that the lake turned into a dust bowl and all the contaminants, that had been more or less safely locked in the sediments in the bottom of the lake, started blowing around with the wind...

What about sending in protected loggers to cut down and remove the trees? Surely the European countries would be willing to chip in a few Euros to protect themselves from a radioactive forest fire? Which, now that I've written it out, sounds like a scenario for one of those crappy Saturday movies on SyFy.

Well, they actually did take out some of the worst areas, but there are several problems with that approach. Notably, it's not only the trees, but basically all the vegetation out there - especially moss is a very good retainer of radionuclides. You'd have to get rid off all the plant and mushroom matter plus the topsoil to the depth of 20-30 cm, IIRC, to get rid of the contamination. Meanwhile you'd be removing the plants that keep the soil together, so you'd have all kind of crap blowing in the winds...

Because after all, Obamacare is all about improving the health of the American people,” the radio host explained. “We know that going to church is good for you, it’s good for your health. So we are going to mandate that you go to church for your own health and we are going to tax the atheists who don’t go to church.”